My Short Stories

The Prismatic Gate (Flash Fiction)

All I can remember is this house. All I know is that I cannot escape. All I know is pain and sorrow.

Why?

It trapped me here. I think? Or perhaps I have been here my whole life... I cannot remember sunshine. Nor happiness. Nor freedom. All I know is it.

It claims to protect me from the world. Calls it disgusting and cruel. But how can that be, if it is just as cruel here? Is this happiness?

No.

This will never be happiness. I must escape.

The Gate. The only way in and out. The only way to save yourself from the monster.

But there's one catch. It's not as simple as walking out. You're trapped here for eternity because of it. Sadly, I cannot speak its name, in fear of it returning.

And when it does return, it sucks out my very life force, leaving me totally helpless on the floor. It never kills me, no. It feeds on me. Claims me for its own because I have the one thing it never can.

A soul.

But if it were just any soul, then why me? I have heard tales of hundreds upon thousands of other human beings like myself. Why me, of all the humans?

It is because I am different. I am special, it tells me. I will never fit in with the other humans, so it protects me from the inevitable pain if I were to be let out.

What makes me so different?

It says it is my soul itself. It is too weak to do things that a normal human can. But I know better. I am not weak, I am stronger than the other human souls, as well as it. Am I?

No...

I am weak because I want to change the body I was born into. It says that that is the cowardly way out. It says that I must give up that childish thinking and stay who I was born as.

So it punishes me when I think otherwise. Feeds on my weak soul. So, when I give up that thinking, I am free.

But I don't think I ever could. This is who I am. I will escape. It is a monster.

I think?

I cannot remember the sunshine. Nor happiness. Nor freedom. All I know is it. It is the mother. I am the child. It protects me from my weakness.

No...

My weakness is my strength. I am who I am, and I will be loved.

I think?

Yes...